2012 – The Year of Mobility

As 2011 drew to a close, we witnessed the now annual publication of speculation regarding whether or not 2012 will be “the year of mobile”.
The reason that people still think it’s worth asking this question is because they are looking at the wrong indicators. It’s based on a channel-centric view of the world that says the year of mobile will arrive when ad spend jumps in the medium.

Those who ask the question simply need to go to a London café, take a bus or a train ride. In these locations you can witness, first-hand, some eye-opening consumer insight. In these spaces you can observe people using Wi-Fi and 3G to connect using their tablets, laptops, e-readers and yes, their smart phones. Whatever device they happen to have to hand…

The era of mobility is already upon us and perhaps our obsession with channels has blinded us to the fact. What matters is that mobility doesn’t change behaviour.

Consumers still connect and use the same platforms in a very similar whether they are at work, at home or on the move. What changes is the device and the screen size. Consumers will simply grab any device that will allow them to connect

We don’t have to ask if 2012 is the year of mobile when iPads and Kindles were amongst the among the top-selling devices at Christmas; when it’s almost impossible to buy a mobile that isn’t a smart phone in the UK and when every network is flogging “unlimited” data bundles.
Most consumers now access the internet at home via wireless networks so for them there is little or no difference to using similar connections out of home.

The era of mobility is upon us not just in the UK but also globally – more and more areas of our lives will be digital and readable on the devices we carry with us. In South Korea, for example, the Ministry of Education aims to digitalise all text books by 2015 with all schools providing Wi-Fi access for their students to access via tablet devices.
The consumer has gone mobile, surely it’s time the industry did.